I talked with a guy who was selling his route in my area. Unfortunately for me, they wouldn't let him sell his route to me because I'm diabetic.
He did have to buy his own vehicle and have it lettered to their specifications. Uniforms had to be purchased through them. They gave him the packages in his "territory" and he plotted his delivery route. He paid for his own gas but Fedx did give him an allowance/credit per mile to reduce his out of pocket expenses. He could set his own hours (within reason) as long as he attempted to make all deliveries by a certain time of day. If he wanted to sleep in, not a problem he'd just have to work later that day.. not always a good thing to do especially if he had a big load of deliveries. If he had a light load, he'd be done by noon or sooner and could take the rest of the day off or could pick up deliveries that were to be made in areas that weren't covered in anyone's territory. Those deliveries paid a lot more to do but you might end up driving quite a way outside your usual route.. a bit of a risk but he said he never lost money on those, and they had a lot of them so it was easy to make some extra $ if you had a light load. He bought his vehicles used off other route owners that were rotating trucks and planning on buying new that way he didn't have to pay a ton for new and extra for paint and lettering.
He was doing pretty good for himself. He'd finished college, (was working as a sub for another guy who had puchased extra territories and just wanted to have someone else do the deliveries and he'd take a cut for what they made for deliveries) He eventually bought that route because he was so familiar with the roads and customers.
He bought a nice house with land for and put almost half down in cash to lower his payments, was planning on getting married and he was only about 24 yrs old. The guys at the warehouse joked saying he was lazy, wasn't motivated, always came in late hung over etc.. but he seemed like an ok guy to me.
I'm still pissed about the diabetic rule though
